Vertigo-inducing Alpine platform almost complete

30/06/2010

Holidays shouldn't really be a time to take your life into your own hands and brave some phobia that has troubled you for most of your life. However, for the multitude of vertigo-sufferers out there, we do have to recommend that you at least look at the pictures for the nearly completed 'AlpspiX viewing tower' that will offer an unparalleled panorama across the Alpine landscape. Even if you don't find yourself taking a few tentative steps along it at some point.

Based in the Garmisch-Partenkirchen region of Germany, the 1000ft tall 'tower' consists of two 24 metre long arms of a walk-way crossing over each other, on which visitors will be able to breathe in the clear air of the mountains and take pictures to their hearts content. 11 metres of each arm is harnessed solidly to the rock it stands on, whilst 13m of each walkway remains suspended in the ether.

The arms themselves are 3 metres wide and constructed out of a grid or mesh of metal to allow snow to pass through them without collecting. The makers of the tower wouldn't want it to be dangerous now, would they?